John L. O'Sullivan - Later Years

Later Years

O'Sullivan was at the peak of his fame and influence at the time of the "Manifest Destiny" articles. For example, at a Tammany Hall victory celebration on January 8, 1845, he proposed erecting a statue to the Democratic Party's founder and hero, Andrew Jackson. The monument that eventually emerged from his proposal was the famous equestrian statue of Jackson in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, which was dedicated in 1853.

Financial troubles abruptly brought an end to his editorial career. The New York Morning News was losing money, and in May 1846 the paper's investors fired O'Sullivan. The new management was unable to turn things around, and the paper ceased publication in September. Around the same time, O'Sullivan sold the Democratic Review, although he would still occasionally write for the magazine. Now thirty-two years old, he began looking for new opportunities.

O'Sullivan married Susan Kearny Rodgers on October 21, 1846. The couple went to Cuba for their honeymoon, where one of O'Sullivan's sisters lived. O'Sullivan thereafter became involved in a movement to win Cuban independence from Spanish rule. Composed of Cuban dissidents and American "filibusters", the movement hoped to have Cuba annexed to the United States. On May 10, 1848, O'Sullivan had the first of several meetings with President Polk to try to convince the president to buy Cuba from Spain. Polk offered Spain one hundred million dollars for Cuba—the amount suggested by O'Sullivan—but the offer was declined.

O'Sullivan continued to work for Cuban independence, raising money for the failed filibustering expedition of Narciso López. As a result, O'Sullivan was charged in federal court in New York with violation of the Neutrality Act. His trial in March 1852 ended in a hung jury. Although O'Sullivan's reputation was tarnished, he was appointed by the Pierce administration as the U.S. Minister to Portugal, serving from 1854 to 1858. This proved to be his last steady employment; he and his wife would spend the rest of their lives on the edge of poverty.

O'Sullivan opposed the coming of the American Civil War, hoping that a peaceful solution—or a peaceful separation of North and South—could be worked out. In Europe when the war began, O'Sullivan became an active supporter of the Confederate States of America; he may have been on the Confederate payroll at some point. O'Sullivan wrote a number of pamphlets promoting the Confederate cause, arguing that the presidency had become too powerful and that states' rights needed to be protected against encroachment by the central government. Although he had earlier supported the "free soil" movement, he now defended the institution of slavery, writing that blacks and whites could not live together in harmony without it. His activities greatly disappointed some of his old friends, including Hawthorne. After the war, he spent several more years in self-imposed exile in Europe

O'Sullivan returned to New York in the late 1870s, where he unsuccessfully tried to use his Democratic contacts to get appointed to some office. His political life, however, was over. After the death of his mother, he became a believer in Spiritualism, then a popular religious movement, and claimed to have used the services of one of the Fox sisters to communicate with the spirits of people such as William Shakespeare.

O'Sullivan suffered a stroke in 1889. He died in obscurity from influenza in a residential hotel in New York City in 1895, just as the phrase "Manifest Destiny" was being revived. He is buried in the Moravian Cemetery on Staten Island.